Too often overlooked and under-appreciated amidst the hundreds of formal high-visibility papers and sessions, the posters offered by scientists worldwide provide a uniquely useful and interesting perspective.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA., DEC. 9, 2013 — There are an enormous number of posters down here in the bowels of Moscone South; I can barely see the far end of the room from where I’m at.

A few interesting things I’ve noticed so far:

The NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado) is now providing near-real-time information on Greenland ice. Their poster here has a graph of 2013′s melt compared to the very large melt of 2012, as does their site; their data comes from Xavier Fettweis at the University of Liège, and should be fun for data wonks to explore.

And who says models and reality don’t agree? The Marshall Space Flight Center has a poster here that shows, among other things, the frequency of extremely warm and extremely cold days at their site in Alabama — something you might want to know if you’re tasked with testing high-powered rockets which might, just say, have a few O-rings in them. The picture here shows the actual trends and, to their right, the projected trends. Impressive.

David Appell

David Appell is a science writer living in Oregon and a regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections. (E-mail: david@yaleclimatemediaforum.org, Twitter: @davidappell)